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Category Zoning

Even Jane Jacobs thought Houston doesn’t have zoning

“Houston has no zoning” is a very popular urban planning meme. It has its roots in Houston’s lacks one very specific kind of zoning: Euclidean separation of residential, commercial, and industrial uses. Euclidean zoning happens to be the one kind of planning that people easily understand (the whole meatpacking-plant-in-my-backyard fear), and so the usual panoply of density-inhibiting regulations (parking minimums, minimum lot requirements, FAR restrictions, etc.) is downplayed or even outright ignored, despite Michael Lewyn’s claims that Houston is in many ways more restrictive than even its Sun Belt neighbors. But still, despite its pervasiveness, I was surprised to hear from commenter Alon Levy that in a 2001 interview with Reason Magazine, even Jane Jacobs was still laboring under the myth: Reason: When the change comes, if it is an incremental, slowly evolving, uncontrolled sort of natural change, it’s easy for society to accommodate that, isn’t it? Jacobs: Yes it is. But if all that zoning is kept, that can’t happen. Reason: This is why I’m one of the few people you’ve met who likes Houston, because it has no zoning. Jacobs: It has no zoning. But all the same, it looks like all the places that do have zoning. Because the same developers and bankers who deal with places that do have zoning carry their same ideas when they finance or build something in Houston. Reason: There are not enough Houstons to change the way things are built or developed? Jacobs: Right. Maybe I’m just a sadist, but my favorite part of the interview was the first few pages where the interviewer tries to get Jacobs to support the usual libertarian “war on cars” line and she deftly avoids it. Finally, he thinks he’s gotten her when she says something bad about New Urbanism, but then it turns out […]

Why I don’t like Inclusionary Zoning

Inclusionary zoning is a hot item among urban planners today, and is often seen as a solution to residential segregation and high housing costs. Exact implementations vary, but the general idea is that developers of multi-unit housing projects are encouraged to set aside a certain percentage of their units, generally ranging from 10-30%, but sometimes even more, as “affordable housing” units. In other words, some proportion of the units are under rent controls to the point where they must be rented (or sold) at a loss by the developer. Sometimes the schemes are voluntary and give developers density bonuses, sometimes developers can pay a fee instead of setting aside units. The exact proportion of units that must be set aside and loss developers take on each unit also varies. As you can imagine, I’m not in favor of this system, but it’s a complicated issue, so this is going to be a long article. Inclusionary zoning is a relatively new concept, first implemented in the 1970s, to combat the growing problem of residential segregation of classes and races, whose origins are interesting and, I think, germane to the conversation. I generally see two explanations given by proponents of IZ for why segregation and unaffordability arose in the first place: market forces and zoning (or, as they call it, exclusionary zoning). Quoteth a law review article: Affordable housing has always been a problem in the United States. Cities and towns originally engaged in forms of discrimination through exclusionary zoning to exclude low-income residents. Of course, this is only true if your history begins in 1930. But from the mid-18th century to the turn of the century, America underwent a tremendous urban population boom fueled by railed transit and a massive immigration wave from Europe, and the housing stock adjusted just fine […]

This is how gentrification happens: Northwest DC and the height restriction

Lydia DePillis wrote the Washington City Paper’s cover story on the case for Congress overturning DC’s height limit, which should be very familiar to readers of this blog. It’s got some interesting history in it (DC’s height limit was apparently influenced by George Washington’s personal aesthetics, despite the fact that he never governed from the city), but the part that was really interesting to me was the part where she discusses what the new limitations should be. It’s not politically practical to advocate for lifting the limit without reservations, as we here would like, and there are the usual caveats and equivocations (“What if additional height were granted on a competitive basis, and awarded for the best design?”). But the part that really stood out to me was this graphic (click on the image and scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see a bigger version), outlining where Lydia thinks the height restrictions should be lifted: Anyone familiar with DC geography will notice that the area most insulated from change – Northwest DC – is the richest part of town, full of desirable white neighborhoods. The areas where DePillis advocates lifting the height limit – neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River figure prominently in the graphic – are far blacker and poorer than the rest of DC. Sure, there are pretty buildings in NW and a lot of ugly ones in Anacostia, but there are also beautiful homes off of Benning Road and shitty ones in Burleith. (Which, I should add, could desperately use some taller buildings, given its proximity to the perpetually housing-strapped Georgetown University and its rather ugly architecture compared to Georgetown proper.) This tactic of upzoning poor black neighborhoods while leaving white neighborhoods unchanged is very common, and I realize that Lydia is just trying […]

Midnight links

1. Cap’n Transit weighs in on the ARC debate, and shows that Chris Christie is more interested in shifting resources to his suburban constituents than to cutting spending. Here’s the best part: Editorial board member: What’s the difference between a gas tax hike and a fare hike, besides who it lands on? Christie: That’s the difference. 2. The Los Angeles Times profiles Donald Shoup. I liked this part: Shoup depends on his bicycle for much of his mobility. He freely confesses, however, that when behind the wheel of his silver 1994 Infiniti J30, he often circles the block looking for a free parking space. “I don’t like paying for parking,” he says with a shrug. 3. Matt Yglesias notes DC’s second-only-to-NYC office rents, and blames them on the city’s absurd height restriction.  I’m happy that Yglesias is interested in urbanism, but it doesn’t really appear like he reads/interacts with the wider planning blogosphere (I stand corrected).

The economics of redevelopment and the shape of socialist cities

Earlier today I read an article by Daniel Garst about Bejing’s awkward population distribution that reminded me of a journal article about the general shape of socialist cities that I read a while back. Garst talks about Beijing being a “circus tent” when it comes to density, with population density increasing as you travel away from the city center, in contrast to the “pyramid” style of most cities, with high densities in the center and lower densities around the periphery (see chart for a visual representation). This immediately made me think of an article by Alain Bertraud and Bertrand Renaud called “Socialist Cities without Land Markets,” where they describe exactly this phenomenon, and explain it as a failure of administrative urban planning. Here’s an excerpt: As their economy and their population grow, cities expand through the progressive addition of concentric rings, similar to the growth of trees in successive seasons. New rings are added to the periphery as the city grows. With each ring, land use reflects the combined effects of demography, technology, and the economy at the time when the ring was developed. Wile this organic incremental growth is common to all cities, in a market city changing land prices exert their pressure simultaneously in all areas of the city, not just at the periphery. Land prices exert a powerful influence to recycle already developed land in the inner rings when the type and intensity of the existing use is too different from the land’s optimum economic use. Thus, changing land values bring a built-in urban dynamism as ceaseless variations in land prices put a constant pressure on the current uses of land and trigger changes to new activities and/or densities. Under the administrative-command economy, the absence of land prices eliminated the main incentive to redevelop built-up areas by […]

Darien, CT gets sued by the DOJ over inclusionary zoning

The New York Times has an interesting article about a Justice Department probe into Darien, CT’s local inclusionary zoning rules. Inclusionary zoning means essentially that multi-unit developments have to offer a portion of the project as “affordable housing,” which invariably means charging below-market rents. We here at Market Urbanism oppose it because it essentially acts as a tax on dense development that’s not levied on the sort of one-off developments that are usually large lot, detached houses, which discriminates against the very people that it purports to be helping. While the people who live in the units certainly benefit from the too-good-to-be-true rents, every other poor person loses out as their housing costs rise. But unfortunately, the DOJ doesn’t appear worried about inclusionary zoning generally, but rather is interested in the “priority populations” provision, which determines who gets the low-rent housing, which is in high demand because of the artificially low price. Currently the town favors current residents, which the Justice Department is right to find discriminatory, since the well-healed New York City suburb is overwhelmingly white. While I’m always glad to see inclusionary zoning challenged, the focus on the priority populations provision strikes me as a bit narrow-sighted – they should be concerned about inclusionary zoning itself reducing affordable development. And in fact, the New York Times seems to recognize this, as they quote a developer at length as she describes the difficult of developing anything affordable in Darien. Sorry for such a long quote, but it’s very interesting: Inclusionary zoning was one strategy for accomplishing that goal. The policy hasn’t been used yet, as no qualifying developments have been approved since it went into effect in May 2009. The federal inquiry came to light last month, when Christopher and Margaret Stefanoni, a local couple who have sought approvals […]

Zoning blighted Manhattanville before Columbia did

Something that always annoyed me about discussions of the state of Manhattanville and Columbia’s blight study is the fact that they usually leave out restrictive zoning as the original sin. We’re certainly no fans of eminent domain or Columbia’s plans for the West Harlem neighborhood, and while people are right to point out that Columbia’s neighborhood acquisitions and plans are key drivers of the further decline of the neighborhood, it would be stretching the truth to say that the neighborhood’s blight is entirely Columbia’s fault. The fact is that even before Columbia descended upon the neighborhood, its zoning classification just wouldn’t allow it to be a nice place. What else would you expect from an area that’s zoned mostly for industrial and manufacturing uses and is inhabited mostly by storage companies and auto repair shops? And the neighborhood organizations themselves weren’t doing the best job selling the alternatives. While their plan included some upzonings, it also would have hobbled the area with the onerous restrictions that are all too common throughout the city. There was an emphasis on preservation of the status quo, with some light industry retained. Inclusionary zoning and community benefits agreements would have driven up the cost of development further. They also took the stance that parking in the area was “insufficient” and “inadequate,” and called for “affordable municipal parking.” Clearly not being familiar with the work of Donald Shoup, they argued that “limited parking cause[s] drivers to circle blocks looking for on-street parking.” Again, while we’re no fans of eminent domain or Columbia’s heavy-handed tactics, it’s important to remember how difficult it is to do things “the right way,” and how much time and money is necessary to get plots of land rezoned. NYU, which doesn’t have the blight excuse for its Lower Manhattan acquisitions, is […]

Toronto’s new zoning code

by Stephen Smith Matt Yglesias points to an article about Toronto’s new zoning code. The story is short on details, although the lowering of parking minimums near transit and overall simplification of the code seem like appealing features to Market Urbanists. I did, however, find a blog post from last year about the proposed changes, which has a lot more details. Keep in mind that this is from last year and so it might not still be relevant, but if anyone’s interested in digging a little deeper into the new code, there’s a good place to start. This part, though, is not very encouraging: The new zoning also takes a more coherent approach to minimum parking provisions, requiring a lot less parking for condos/apartments or office buildings that are in the downtown core or on heavy transit lines. Many new projects don’t need the amount of parking required by zoning, and developers would be glad not to pay the extra cost to provide it. But the overall reduction in minimum parking requirements is disappointingly limited — the planner in charge of the project, Joe D’Abramo, estimated it at about 10% less compared to previous requirements. There also seems to be a lot of New Urbanist-style regulation – for example, making it more difficult to build drive-thrus and driveways – that we don’t necessarily support. When you look at the revisions as a whole I doubt that there’s more urban-forcing than urban-allowing, but I do wish that they’d work harder on repealing things like parking minimums and density restrictions before trying mandate density. Even if the mandatory New Urbanist regulations are minor, they give ammo to people like Randal O’Toole and the Cato/Reason bunch to claim that urbanism is being forced down people’s throats rather than simply being allowed. New Urbanist […]

Even Midtown Manhattan not immune to anti-density NIMBYism

by Stephen Smith In general, I think of Manhattan below Central Park as perhaps the freest place in America in terms of land use restrictions. There are no minimum parking regulations, zoning variances are relatively easy to get, and FAR restrictions are relatively generous. Historical preservation designations sometimes limit redevelopment, but other than that, developers have a relatively free hand to…develop. That is, unless you’re talking about building a tall skyscraper within 17 blocks of the Empire State Building: The owners of the Empire State Building, Anthony E. and Peter L. Malkin, even want a 17-block no-go zone surrounding their 1,250-foot tall tower. This would prevent Vornado Realty Trust, which wants to erect the new building on Seventh Avenue, or any other developer, from putting up a similarly oversize building in the zone. The City Planning Commission has already approved Vornado’s plan for a tower, called 15 Penn Plaza, opposite Pennsylvania Station. It would be 56 percent larger than what would ordinarily be allowed, in keeping with the city’s desire to promote high-density development close to transit hubs. But Community Board 5, whose district includes the area, did not approve. A committee at the board said the developer had not provided a rationale for such a large zoning bonus, especially since it did not have a tenant and might not build for years. While we at Market Urbanism are generally not fans of tying density bonuses to private improvement of public infrastructure, we should note that part of the quid-pro-quo for the government allowing the building is that the developer make improvements to Penn Station “worth more than $100 million,” which would be lost if the project is not approved. (HT: Infrastructurist) Edit: I may have overstated the freeness of Manhattan’s land use situation – see the comments section for […]

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